STRATHGORDON, TASMANIA
We’ve decided to take a two-day trip to explore some areas west of the city, so we started this morning by visiting a wildlife park near Mt. Field National Park, about 180 kilometers northwest of Hobart. They had a lot of native animals on display, including kangaroos, wombats, quolls, emus, and of course, Tasmanian devils. (And no, the latter don’t travel in little tornadoes, although they do make ridiculous growly noises that sound a little like the cartoon character.) The park rescues a lot of orphaned critters, so we got to watch one of the keepers bottle-feed some baby wallabies, wombats, and brush-tailed possums. All of which, I have to admit, were exceedingly adorable, even by baby animal standards.
But the coolest thing to me was that in the stream running behind the park was a family of platypuses (platypi?) living totally wild! We watched one of them from the riverbank, swimming and rooting around in the mud. Very cool, but man, what bizarre creatures!
After eating in the garden of an awesome little new-agey restaurant called Celtic Dawn (complete with miniature Stonehenge a la Spinal Tap), we then headed into the national park, where we took the trail to one of Tasmania’s most-photographed attractions, Russell Falls, a series of cascades that drop in steps down vertical rock walls. We followed the track further to another waterfall, Horseshoe Falls, and saw some incredibly huge eucalyptus trees, as well as a couple of Tasmanian pademelons—little wallabies endemic to Tasmania—hopping around in the bush.
Later in the afternoon we did a nature walk through the sub-alpine moorland around Lake Dobson, through ancient pencil pines and strange-looking pandani plants, and stopped for the night in Strathgordon, at a hotel originally built as lodging for workers who built the nearby Gordon Dam in the 1970s. (This project remains rather controversial, as it flooded an entire valley in the national park to create a giant lake.)
At night, Eric and I hung out in the hotel bar, getting drunk and playing darts, while rough-looking hydroelectric workers played Meat Loaf and The Eagles on the jukebox, and kangaroos hopped around on the grass outside. Kind of a surreal experience, really!
We’ve decided to take a two-day trip to explore some areas west of the city, so we started this morning by visiting a wildlife park near Mt. Field National Park, about 180 kilometers northwest of Hobart. They had a lot of native animals on display, including kangaroos, wombats, quolls, emus, and of course, Tasmanian devils. (And no, the latter don’t travel in little tornadoes, although they do make ridiculous growly noises that sound a little like the cartoon character.) The park rescues a lot of orphaned critters, so we got to watch one of the keepers bottle-feed some baby wallabies, wombats, and brush-tailed possums. All of which, I have to admit, were exceedingly adorable, even by baby animal standards.
But the coolest thing to me was that in the stream running behind the park was a family of platypuses (platypi?) living totally wild! We watched one of them from the riverbank, swimming and rooting around in the mud. Very cool, but man, what bizarre creatures!
After eating in the garden of an awesome little new-agey restaurant called Celtic Dawn (complete with miniature Stonehenge a la Spinal Tap), we then headed into the national park, where we took the trail to one of Tasmania’s most-photographed attractions, Russell Falls, a series of cascades that drop in steps down vertical rock walls. We followed the track further to another waterfall, Horseshoe Falls, and saw some incredibly huge eucalyptus trees, as well as a couple of Tasmanian pademelons—little wallabies endemic to Tasmania—hopping around in the bush.
Later in the afternoon we did a nature walk through the sub-alpine moorland around Lake Dobson, through ancient pencil pines and strange-looking pandani plants, and stopped for the night in Strathgordon, at a hotel originally built as lodging for workers who built the nearby Gordon Dam in the 1970s. (This project remains rather controversial, as it flooded an entire valley in the national park to create a giant lake.)
At night, Eric and I hung out in the hotel bar, getting drunk and playing darts, while rough-looking hydroelectric workers played Meat Loaf and The Eagles on the jukebox, and kangaroos hopped around on the grass outside. Kind of a surreal experience, really!
posted by John Kuge at 6:00 PM
1 Comments:
For future reference, Platypus is actually a Greek word. In proper Greek, the plural for words ending with "-pus" is "-podes" (not the Latin "-pi"). Therefore, the proper plural for platypus is platypodes.
James LeBleu
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